Dix­ie Ann Dick­son

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning has re­fused to com­ment on ques­tions con­cern­ing her hus­band Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er Ju­liana Pe­na.

Mrs Man­ning was at­tend­ing a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the Re­gion­al Plan­ning Frame­work for the San Juan Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion at the Hi­malaya Club, San Juan, on Wednes­day. Sub­se­quent to the con­sul­ta­tion, when Man­ning was asked if she knew Pe­na, al­so known as Ju­liana De­von­ish, she de­clined com­ment. "I am not an­swer­ing any ques­tions," Man­ning said. Asked again if she ever met Pe­na, she re­peat­ed with a smile: "I am not an­swer­ing any ques­tions." Pe­na has re­cent­ly been the cen­tre of at­ten­tion about her in­volve­ment in the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar church be­ing con­struct­ed at Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma. But, Man­ning's re­fusal to an­swer the ques­tions came short­ly af­ter re­spond­ing to oth­er ques­tions from the me­dia.

Man­ning al­so was asked to com­ment on the re­hir­ing of the em­ploy­ees who were fired at the prime min­is­ter's res­i­dence in St Ann's for breach­ing the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty's (WASA) reg­u­la­tions. The prime min­is­ter said two weeks ago he planned to re­hire the work­ers. She said: "The prime min­is­ter has been dis­cussing the is­sue with MTS for the work­ers to be re­hired." Man­ning said she could not give de­tails but "there was an as­sur­ance that MTS would re­hire the work­ers." But, she not­ed the prime min­is­ter still had to get feed­back from MTS on the is­sue. Dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion, how­ev­er, head of In­ter­plan Group Ltd, Azad Mo­hammed, said the ma­jor prob­lem the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion faced was the sheer size of the re­gion. He said the re­gion was too large for the cor­po­ra­tion to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age it.

In his pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment, Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed the min­istry should re­duce the bound­ary lim­it. He said the San Juan re­gion had been rid­dled with flood­ing and traf­fic con­ges­tion which he at­trib­uted to the in­abil­i­ty to de­cen­tralise Port-of-Spain and the lack of prop­er land use. The res­i­dents al­so came out in their num­bers to air their con­cerns. The gen­er­al is­sues raised were flood­ing, poor wa­ter sup­ply, traf­fic con­ges­tion and the lack of recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties. One res­i­dent com­plained about the many emp­ty promis­es by the Gov­ern­ment and said he was hop­ing the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment plan and re­form would be im­ple­ment­ed for the bet­ter­ment of the peo­ple.